Our Philadelphia

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

These old friends and old associations took away from the uneasiness it might otherwise have given me to find the church, for which I had exchanged the Convent chapel, hidden up an alley as if its existence were a sin. But overlook it as I might, this was the one important fact about St. Joseph's which, otherwise, had no particular interest. It did not count as architecture, it boasted of no beauty of decoration: an inconspicuous, commonplace building from every point of view, of which I consequently retain but the vaguest memory. As I write, I can see, as if it were before me, the Convent chapel, its every nook and corner, almost its every stone, this altar here, that picture there, the confessional in the screened-off space where visitors sat, the dark step close to the altar railing where I carried my wrongs and my sorrows. But try as I may, I cannot see St. Joseph's as it was, cannot see any detail, nothing save the general shabbiness and untidiness that shocked my convent-bred eyes. Could it have appealed by its beauty, like the old Cathedrals of Europe, or, for that matter, like the old churches of Philadelphia, no doubt I should be able to recall it as vividly as the Convent chapel. Because I cannot, because it impressed me so superficially, I regret the more that I had not the sense to appreciate the interest it borrowed from the romance of history and the beauty of suffering—the history of the Catholic religion in Philadelphia which I might have read in this careful hiding of its temple; the suffering of the scapegoat among churches, obliged to keep out of sight, atoning for their intolerance in a desert of secrecy, letting no man know where its prayers were said or its services held. Catholics had to practise their religion like criminals skulking from the law. Members of a Protestant church might dispute among themselves to the point of blows, but they never thought of interfering with the members of any other church, except the Catholic, against which they could all cheerfully join. There were times when the Friends, most tolerant of men, were influenced by this general hostility, and I rather think the worst moment in Penn's life was when he was forced to protest against the scandal of the Mass in his town of Brotherly Love.

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SEVENTH STREET AND WASHINGTON SQUARE

The marvel is that Catholics ventured out of their hiding-places as soon as they did. They had emerged so successfully by Revolutionary times that the stranger in Philadelphia could find his way to "the Romish chapel" and enjoy the luxury of knowing that he was not as these poor wretches who fingered their beads and chanted Latin not a word of which they understood. The Jesuits have the wisdom of their reputation. When they built their church the Colonies had for some years been the United States, and hatred was less outspoken, and persecution was more intermittent, but they believed discretion to be the better part of valour and the truest security in not challenging attack. That is why they built St. Joseph's in Willing's Alley where the visitor with a dramatic sense must be as thrilled by it as by the secret chapels and underground passages in old Elizabethan mansions and Scott's novels. Philadelphia gave the Jesuits a proof of their wisdom when, within a quarter of a century, Young America, in a playful moment, burnt down as much as it could of St. Michael's and St. Augustine's; churches which had been built bravely and hopefully in open places. Young America believed in a healthy reminder to Catholics, that, if they had not been disturbed for some time, it was not because they did not deserve to be.

Philadelphia had got beyond the exciting stage of intolerance before I was born. There were no delicious tremors to be had when I heard Mass at St. Joseph's or went to Vespers at St. Mary's. There was no ear alert for a warning of the approach of the enemy, no eye strained for the first wisp of smoke or burst of flame. With churches and convents everywhere—convents intruding even upon Walnut Street and Rittenhouse Square—with a big Cathedral in town and a big Seminary at Villanova, Catholics were in a fair way to forget it had ever been as dangerous for them as for the early Christians to venture from their catacombs. Their religion had become a tame affair, holding out no prospect of the martyr's crown. Only the social prejudice survived, but it was the more bitter to fight because, whether the end was victory or defeat, it appeared so inglorious a struggle to be engaged in.

One good result there was of this social ostracism. I leave myself out of the argument. Religion, I have often heard it said, is a matter of temperament. As this story of my relations to Philadelphia seems to be resolving itself into a general confession, I must at least confess my certainty that I have not and never had the necessary temperament, that, moreover, the necessary temperament is not to be had by any effort of will power, depending rather upon "the influence of the unknown powers." But I am not totally blind, nor was I in the old days when, many as were the things I did not see, my eyes were still open to the effect of social opposition on Catholics with the temperament. It made them more devout, at times more defiant. I know churches that are in themselves alone a reward for faith and fidelity—who would not be a Catholic in the dim religious light of Chartres Cathedral, or in the sombre splendours of Seville and Barcelona? But St. Joseph's and St. Mary's, St. Patrick's and St. John's gave no such reward, nor did the Cathedral in its far-away imitation of the Jesuit churches of Italy and France. In these arid, unemotional interiors, emotion could not kindle piety which, if not fed by more spiritual stuff, was bound to flicker and go out. This is why the Philadelphian who, in those unattractive churches and in spite of the social price paid, remained faithful, was the most devout Catholic I have ever met at home or in my wanderings.

V

For his spiritual welfare, it might have been better had the conditions remained as I knew them. But even at that period, the signs of weakening in the social barrier must have jumped to my eyes had I had eyes for the fine shades. Catholics among themselves had begun to put up social barriers, so much further had Philadelphia travelled on the road to liberty.

Religiously, one of their churches was as good as another, but not socially. St. Mark's, from its superior Episcopal heights, might look down equally upon St. Patrick's and St. John's, but the Catholic with a pew at St. John's did not at all look upon the Catholic with a seat at St. Patrick's as on the same social level as himself. St. Patrick's name alone was sufficient to attract an Irish congregation, and the Irish who then flocked to Philadelphia were not the flower of Ireland's aristocracy. St. John's, by some unnamed right, claimed the Catholics of social pretensions—the excellence of its music may have strengthened its claim. I know that my Father, who was a religious man, did not object to having the comfort of religion strengthened by the charms of Gounod's Mass well sung, and, at the last, he drifted from the Cathedral to St. John's.